WASHINGTON, 9 December 2007 — The White House faced another clash with Congress yesterday after furious Democratic lawmakers demanded a probe into the CIA’s destruction of tapes showing harsh interrogations of captured Al-Qaeda operatives. The Central Intelligence Agency’s admission that it destroyed tapes of at least two interrogations in 2005, at a time when Congress was probing torture allegations, sparked outrage among lawmakers and human rights groups.
The recordings were disposed of despite appeals by White House and Justice Department officials, who advised the CIA in 2003 against destroying the materials, The New York Times reported yesterday.
In a note to his staff on Thursday, CIA director Michael Hayden said they were destroyed to protect the identities of the CIA agents shown in the tapes. But The Washington Post did not believe him, suggesting yesterday the CIA was likely driven by different motives.
“It is far more plausible that CIA officials eliminated evidence that could have been used to hold interrogators accountable for illegal acts of torture — as well as the more senior administration officials who ordered or approved those acts,” the newspaper said. “It is a startling disclosure,” said Senate No. 2 leader Richard Durbin, who asked the Justice Department to investigate whether CIA officials committed obstruction of justice by discarding the tapes.
Durbin called the destruction of the tapes “very troubling.” Hayden, however, said government lawyers who reviewed the tapes found that the detainees were not subjected to illegal abuse and that the decision to destroy them was made by the CIA.
Hayden told his staff that keeping the tapes would have risked the lives of CIA agents. “Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from Al-Qaeda and its sympathizers,” he said.
But Democrats rejected his explanation. “It’s a pathetic excuse,” Sen. Carl Levin told reporters. “You would have to burn every document in the CIA that has the identity of an agent on it, under that theory.” Hayden did not say how many detainees were videotaped but alluded to media reports which said interrogations of at least two Al-Qaeda operatives were filmed.
The New York Times reported the tapes showed “severe interrogation techniques” used on Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, who were among the first suspects interrogated by the CIA in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
